SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Blame didn’t break any stopwatches, nor would people likely have even picked up their heads to watch if they hadn’t known the horse in the blue saddle towel with jockey Garrett Gomez aboard breezing immediately after the renovation break here Tuesday was the second choice for next week’s Grade 1 Whitney. But Blame’s easy half-mile work in 49.76 seconds had his trainer, Al Stall Jr., smiling from ear to ear as his star cooled out at the barn about an hour later.

DEL MAR, Calif. – Richard’s Kid is the defending champion of Del Mar’s biggest race, the $1 million Pacific Classic. After finishing third in the Hollywood Gold Cup earlier this month, he is scheduled to have one local prep for the 1 1/4-mile Pacific Classic. But whether that comes on Friday, in the Cougar II Handicap at 1 1/2 miles, or Saturday, in the San Diego Handicap at 1 1/16 miles, is still to be determined.

AUBURN, Wash. – Get You, who threatened the six-furlong track record in his last start, headlines the feature race Thursday at Emerald Downs. A $15,000 claimer for older horses at six furlongs, it’s the sixth of seven races on a program that begins at 6 p.m. Pacific.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Turf Melody made little noise in his first and only start on the grass last fall at Keeneland, but trainer Graham Motion is confident that the 3-year-old will live up to his name when returning to the turf for Thursday’s $70,000 Quick Call Stakes at Saratoga.

Golden Gate Fields completed scheduled maintenance work on its Tapeta track surface Monday in preparation for the opening of its summer-fall meet on Aug. 25.

New fibers and wax were added to the surface beginning after Sunday’s workouts. The additions, made under the supervision of track superintendant Juan Meza and a team from Tapeta Footings, are designed to rejuvenate the synthetic surface, which was first installed in the summer of 2007.

Officials at River Downs have slashed purses in half for the Cradle and Bassinet stakes, the annual showcase events at the Cincinnati track.

The Sept. 6 Cradle will go from $200,000 to $100,000 and the Sept. 4 Bassinet from $100,000 to $50,000, according to the track’s general manager, Jack Hanessian.

“It is a regrettable move, but one we needed to make to protect the integrity of our daily purses for the local horsemen,” he said in a release.

DEL MAR, Calif. – It was at Del Mar last summer where Softly Singing gave the first indications that she could be the best filly of her crop in the barn of trainer Jerry Hollendorfer. But an ill-timed injury, and the emergence of Blind Luck, has made Softly Singing all but forgotten. Not at the barn, though.

“She’s a nice filly,” Dan Ward, Hollendorfer’s top local assistant, said Tuesday morning at Del Mar. “She needed time off for a knee. Down here, she’s really perked up. Her last two works have been terrific.”

With 14 career starts, King Ledley has had more experience than any of his opponents in the Thursday feature at Arlington Park in Arlington Heights, Ill. He also may have had more tough luck.

Still eligible for first-level allowance conditions, King Ledley will be favored again Thursday when he is part of an overflow crowd of 3-year-olds entered in the sixth of nine races, an “about” one-mile turf race with a $41,480 purse. Trainer Darrin Miller is hoping the Kentucky-bred colt can finally get the right kind of trip from post 2 under jockey Jimmy Graham and clear this hurdle.

Jockey silks custodian Anthony Baze and owner William Wilbur will appear before stewards at Santa Rosa on Aug. 7 to answer a complaint filed by the California Horse Racing Board after the jockey of a horse part-owned by Wilbur wore the wrong silks in a race at the California State Fair on July 15.

According to the complaint, Baze "received financial consideration and conspired to aid and abet" Wilbur in having the jockey ride in the silks of another owner. Michael Martinez rode the horse, the first-time starter Mute Rudulph, while winning the fourth race that day.

DEL MAR, Calif. – For all the planning that can go into a key workout for trainer Bob Baffert, ranging from decisions on proper workmates to making sure he is in radio contact with his riders, there is still an element of uncontrolled chaos to a morning at the track, namely that other trainers have horses out there, trying to accomplish their own goals.